Planning the Raspberry Pi invasion

It’s the next to last day of school. So naturally my thoughts are on next year! I’m still in “school mode” and not in “summer mode” quite yet. Give me a few days…..

I’m planning to inject some serious Raspberry Pi goodness into my middle school curriculum next year. It’s exciting and terrifying all at once. So what’s exciting? I truly believe in the mission of the RPi Foundation…. bringing hands-on computing to students today. And I believe that the Pi is the best way forward and will bring back some of the excitement that many of us felt when personal computers were brand new.

And what’s terrifying? Truthfully, it’s the sheer magnitude of what you can do with these things. Go through the forums, follow people on Twitter, read the MagPi magazine, and you’ll be overwhelmed with what you can do with these things: refrigerator monitors, space exploration, weather stations, Twitter feeds, Minecraft coding, live music coding, electronics, sensors, oh my! The list goes on and on.

Fortunately I ran a Creation Station club this year, where I got students to experiment with various projects on the Pi (among other things), so I have some ideas of what might work. I’ve got 20 Pi 3’s, and 20 Sense HATs. I figure that right there should give us enough to play with for year one. I also have an assortment of one-off pieces: floras, cameras, etc. So any of those might spark serious interest, too.

Along with those ideas, I’m also working on logistics — where do I store them, how do I share them between classes, how do I back up student work, how do we run them in our iMac lab…..

Stay tuned for further updates over the summer! Also hoping to be chosen for August’s Picademy in Baltimore!